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Keira Knightley and musician James Righton have been together for over a decade and share two children. Yet, the relationship took Knightley by surprise.
In an interview with TimeOut in 2014, she admitted that marriage wasn’t really on her to-do list before meeting Righton.
“My parents are deeply hippy. They got married because it was the only way they could get a mortgage at the time,” Knightley explained. “I grew up with them going, ‘Don’t know why you’d ever get married.’ And then we did. It’s nice. It’s been fun. Until it isn’t and then you get divorced! Fingers crossed for the future.”
Righton was famous in his own right before meeting Knightley, playing with his band The Klaxons. In 2017, he told the New York Post, “She’d never heard of us. Keira was in America when we were having our moment in the sun in the U.K., so she was oblivious..But over the years, she came to loads of gigs and loved ‘Surfing the Void.’”
Here is Knightley and Righton’s complete relationship timeline so far.
2011
In October 2014, Knightley told The Guardian that she met Righton in 2011 after being introduced by a mutual friend at a dinner party.
“[We met] through our mate Tim, not Alexa Chung, as people keep telling me,” she said. “We were very drunk.”
She added, “He’s the sort of person who will be the brightest light in any room, whereas I’m the one who sits in the corner. And he’s much nicer than me.”
May 2012
In May 2012, the couple got engaged, according to Reuters, who spoke with the star’s publicist at the time, Sara Keene, who simply said, “I can confirm that Keira is engaged to be married to James Righton.”
May 2013
The couple were married approximately a year later on May 4, 2013, holding a small ceremony of only 11 people in the small town of Mazan in the South of France, British Vogue reported. There was a reception later at Knightley’s mother’s house for a larger group.
Knightley wore a couture Chanel minidress made of tulle and laced with silver, covered by a white tweed jacket by Karl Lagerfeld. In an interview with Elle UK she revealed she had a second ceremony just for friends, to which she wore a Valentino dress covered in flowers, saying, “I wore it for the ceremony we had just for our friends, in a wood, because you have to have flowers on a dress in a wood.”
For their honeymoon, the couple went to Corsica and were photographed enjoying the beautiful beaches.
Righton told NME that his band the Klaxons were not affected by his high-profile wife, explaining, “I just fell in love with someone who happens to be amazing. We had a beautiful wedding and there was a lot of love.”
“The music is the music,” he continued. “That thing is going to be there because of who she is but I’d say we’re a pretty established band.”
Of the wedding, he shared, “It was the greatest day ever, it was fantastic. We’re still high from it. It was about two weeks ago, it was a big party.”
December 2013
Knightley wore her Chanel wedding dress on the red carpet for the SeriousFun Children’s Network London Gala at the Roundhouse.
December 2014
The pair were reported to be expecting their first child in late 2014.
February 2015
Knightley baby bump was visible at the Hollywood and Highland Center in Los Angeles in her tulle Valentino gown at the 2015 Academy Awards.
May 2015
On May 26, 2015, Knightley and Righton welcomed their first child, Edie Knightley Righton.
In August that year, Knightley told ELLE, “The love thing is astonishing. It’s a very primal, primal love. That’s quite extraordinary…And the ability to have no sleep and continue going. It’s not pleasant—I never thought that I could actually do it for the amount of time that I’ve done it.”
May 2019
In 2019, the couple revealed they were expecting again when Knightley’s baby bump was visible as she left the Chanel J12 cocktail party in Paris.
September 2019
On Sept. 13, 2019, their second daughter, Delilah Knightley Righton, was born. The couple kept her birth a secret for a month, before Knightley told The Telegraph about Delilah. She then shared some details about breastfeeding experience, joking, “We’re going to be apart for six hours in total, so I pumped three feeds’ worth. If I don’t do it my boobs will explode. I mean, quite literally. It’s going everywhere.”
October 2019
She shared more about motherhood during an interview on BBC Breakfast in October.
“I can’t remember what your question was,” she replied candidly to the interviewer. “You can tell I’ve got a six-week-old baby, haven’t you?”
She continued, “Can I just say, this is about the third time since I’ve given birth that my hair has been brushed and I didn’t brush it. Lovely Luke, who is my hairdresser today, he brushed it…I was in my pajamas when they got there and this is somebody else’s dress. It’s all smoke and mirrors today, which I’m super happy about, but I’ve just sort of been led here.”
June 2021
In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar U.K., Knightley talked about parenting during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have a trampoline in our garden, and we decided we were only allowed to wear dresses on it,” she said of playing with her girls. “I put on red lipstick every day, and every bit of Chanel that I have in my cupboard, and my daughter Edie had Chanel ribbons plaited into her hair and fairy wings.”
Righton would dress in one of his “array of peacock-colored Gucci suits.”
Knightley added, “I thought: What is the point of these lovely things sitting in the wardrobe, when it feels quite apocalyptic and scary outside? It felt so important to be really happy for the kids! And so you’d do it, and you’d forget—and then the shopping would arrive and you’d have to wipe it all down before you put it away, do you remember? It got to an extreme when I found these weird, brown apples and my husband said he’d boiled them, because people might have touched them. I said, ‘Right, but now we can’t eat them!’ That was a really weird time, us dressed in really bright clothes, boiling apples!”
March 2023
While on The Drew Barrymore Show, Knightley talked about her and Righton approaching her 10th wedding anniversary.
“Yeah, we made it. We made it. We have two children, and we’ve made it a decade. It’s a miracle,” she joked. “I met my husband in a very drunken way. We were very drunk for our first few dates, so we don’t really remember them.”
June 2024
The couple attended the Chanel show for their Fall/Winter 2025 couture show in Paris.
July 2024
The pair attended a game at Wimbledon together.
November 2024
In an interview with The Times, Knightley talked about becoming more selective of her film roles since becoming a mother.
“I couldn’t go job to job [abroad] now. It wouldn’t be in any way fair on them, and I wouldn’t want to,” she said. “I’ve chosen to have children, I want to bring them up, so I’ve had to take a major step back.”
She then admitted that franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean are too demanding now because “the hours are insane.”
“It’s years of your life,” she explained. “You have no control over where you’re filming, how long you’re filming, what you’re filming.”
She then said of her marriage that 11 years “is good for an actress and a musician.”
“We really annoy each other. But, f–k, do we laugh,” she said, before talking about possibly collaborating on music. “He tries to get me to clap on things occasionally and apparently I’ve got no timing, and we end up in a big row. It would be awful.”
She also said they balance one another at parties.
“If James comes [to the parties], they’re fun. James believes it is his right to have a good time and he will create it anywhere he goes,” she said. “Unless I’m really drunk, and you can’t be if you’re at one of those events, I find it quite intense and quite difficult. James manages to break formality with people and I can’t do that.”
Aimée Lutkin is the weekend editor at ELLE.com. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, The Lonely Hunter, will be released by Dial Press in February 2022.